After December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which selected ten sites in which to imprison more than 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, over half of whom were American citizens. Two of these camps were in the Arkansas Delta, one at Rohwer in Desha County, and the other at Jerome in sections of Chicot and Drew counties. Over 16,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in these two camps between October 1942 and November 1945. The Norfolk Dam was approved for development by Congress under the Flood Control Act of 1938, and the United States Army Crops of Engineers started construction in 1941. Funding for this project, however, was not awarded until the Flood Act of 1941, which included authorization for hydroelectric power. The United States was in need of more power plants to increase wartime manufacturing. The Utah Construction Company and Morrison-Knudsen Construction Company were contracted to build Norfolk Dam. During World War II, this project suffered from lack of manpower since most of the working age men were being drafted into the military.

Description

Letter written by D. Palmer Patterson, Arkansas's Director under the United States Employment Service, informing E. B. Whitaker, Regional Director of the War Relocation Authority in Arkansas, that the Governor would not allow Japanese-Americans out of the camps to work in Arkansas.

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